Humanverse

Jamal vs Jamie

American parents have registered 359,590 Jamies since 1880, against 33,501 Jamals. Jamie is still ahead, with 824 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Jamal against Jamie, 1880 to 2025 0 5k 10k 15k 20k 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Jamal Jamie

Each line is every baby given the name that year, girls and boys added together — the only count that means the same thing for both names. A line breaks where the name fell below five babies in a year — the point at which the SSA stops publishing it — rather than being drawn through a figure nobody published. A single published year in a gap shows as a dot.

Who was ahead

Jamie has been the commoner name in every year either was published, 1884 to 2025. The lead has never changed hands.

The closest they came was 2016, when Jamal had 353 and Jamie had 910.

Side by side

  Jamal Jamie
Total US births 33,501359,590
Most in one year 1,25317,160
Babies in 2025 169824
Estimated living today 32,000335,000
Median age today 3243
Peak year 19931977
Best rank 233rd boys18th girls
Rank in 2025 1,196th857th
First recorded 19461884
Girls / boys 266 / 33,235270,936 / 88,654

A rank is a position within one sex’s list for one year, so the two rank rows are not subtracted from one another and the winning column is not marked on them. The living figure is a life-table estimate, not a count.

Which name is older

Half of the Jamies alive today are over 43; half the Jamals are over 32. That is 11 years between them: two names in use at the same time, worn by two different generations.

Where each one is strongest

How much commoner the name is in that state than it is nationally, from births recorded since 1910.

Both names abroad

Countries whose statistics office publishes both names, so the comparison can be made somewhere other than the United States.

Country Jamal Jamie
England and Wales 2,60144,105
Scotland 5017,974
Ireland 6512,289
France 3,415745
Switzerland 1811,840
Belgium 133718
Norway 35226
Poland 2144

Every spelling a country files separately is added together, over whatever years that country publishes — which is not the same range in any two of them, so read the columns against each other and not the rows.

Compare something else

Related comparisons

Social Security Administration birth records, 1880–2025, public domain. Full histories: Jamal and Jamie.